mackenzie l cowell

Systems and Approaches
Transcriptional Logic, Synthetic Organelles, PoPS

Interests
Synthetic Biology, DIYbiology, iGEM, Microfluidics, Lab Automation, Robotics

Summary
I have a B.S. in biology from Davidson College (liberal arts), and after graduating I spent about 18 months coordinating the international genetically engineered machine competition (igem.org). I quit that job april 1 and have been pursuing some side projects full time. Since I've left I've led a session at a workshop on Synthetic Biology standards (in Seattle - Thanks Microsoft! http://www.sys-bio.org/sbwWiki/workshops/standardsandspecifications08), produced the first draft of a BioBrick Description Language (http://pobol.org), launched a minimal biological parts registry service (http://tinyseq.com), started a blog about some of this stuff (http://bricklet.org), started a DIY-biotech boston interest group (http://DIYbio.org), and been organizing a workshop for SB4.0 (http://sb4.biobricks.org/). I've given a couple of other talks on the side, one at an MIT lunch and one at O'Reilly's ignite boston 2008 (http://ignite.oreilly.com). I've accomplished most of those website efforts with my best friend and partner in crime, jason morrison (http://jayunit.net). I work in a sweet coworking space (http://betahouse.org/) with a bunch of other web entreprenuers and I like my direction right now even though I don't have a job. In 2010 I plan on going to grad school for Synthetic Biology.